Waypoint. Navigating Towards AI Success
- Date
- Tuesday 1 September 2026
- Venue
- The O'Connor Centre
- Format
- A morning of talks and two panels
Waypoint brought together people running Irish businesses, speakers from inside the labs building the models, and a panel of leaders who had already put AI into their own operations. The brief was the same as everything else we do: no hype, no product demo dressed as a keynote, and enough honesty on stage that the room could act on what it heard.
The running order.
The policy picture
Where AI regulation actually stands for a business operating in Ireland, and which parts of it apply to you.
Inside OpenAI
A view from inside one of the two labs most of this runs on.
The Anthropic view
And a view from the other, on where the models are going.
The four pillars
The frame we use for AI adoption, and why most programmes fail on the same one.
People behaviour
The part nobody budgets for: what actually changes when a team is handed a tool this capable.
AI on the ground — the panel
Business leaders from different industries on what they have really done with AI, and what did not work.
Nomad today, and Nomad of the future
Where we are, and what we are building next.
We asked, and we published it.
average rating out of five
Eight written responses
said it met or exceeded what they came for
Five of the eight said exceeded
said they would come to the next one
Not one said they would not
The high calibre of speakers was excellent, and pitched at the right level for the people in attendance. You are setting the bar high for the next one.
The panel engagement was really good, and having such a broad panel covering different industries was really relevant.
The honest panel discussions gave a great insight into the thinking of the business leaders taking part.
It showed how AI breaks down the barriers to projects that might only have been thought about before, never acted on.
A very well polished event.
The half of the feedback nobody publishes.
The same form that produced the numbers above produced these. They are on the page because a retrospective that prints only the good half is not a retrospective, and because this is the list the next one gets built from.
- The networking felt rushed, and the hall was the wrong room for it. More time, better space.
- Coffee at the mid-morning break. A small thing that came up more than once.
- A proper Q&A with the panel, not just the panel.
- More of the interactive segments — the ones where the room had to do something were the ones people remembered.
- More about Nomad. Several people said we undersold ourselves at our own event.
- Hackathon
Hackathons & Demo Day
Mixed teams get a short sprint to build something with AI, then show it in public — including the unfinished parts. Beginners and professionals in the same room.
Read about it → - Open competition
The Strange Data Project
An open competition on whether unusual, long-tail and under-represented data makes AI systems better. A €5,000 prize pool and a public Demo Day.
Read about it → - Meetup
Young AI Dublin
Students, early-career people and anyone curious about AI in Dublin. Free entry, good coffee, and speakers who respect the audience's time.
Read about it →